What Didn't and Almost Did Happen
by dharmamonkey
Summary: Booth sits in the hospital with Bones and his newborn daughter and reflects on the night behind the pool hall, the night that he almost took Bones home with him.  This is Chapter 48 of "Everything Happens Eventually" posted as a one-shot.


**A/N: **_I don't own _Bones_, but I'd definitely be interested in renting Booth by the hour (a five-hour minimum would apply)._

_I've posted this same piece both as Chapter 48 of my hiatus fic "Everything Happens Eventually" and as a one-shot (because I think it can stand on its own). It's **M-rated**, so sensitive types and minors should avoid. All others—read on._

_Thanks to everyone who has left reviews on my previous ditties. Every time I post something, I find myself checking my emails a couple of times an hour to see if I've gotten any reviews. Reviews really do keep me writing. It's the truth. I crave feedback: good, bad, long, short, generic or otherwise. I need to know if I'm doing the right thing here. So, **please **leave a review!_

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><p>"<em>We are <em>not _spending the night together," she said with a crooked smile as she opened the taxi door._

"_Of course we are," I said, still standing under the overhang behind the pool hall. It took several moments for her declaration to filter through my alcohol-addled brain. "Why?"_

"_Tequila," she said as she ducked into the cab._

I blinked, once, then twice, trying to shake off the disorienting sensation of deep sleep as I tried to remember where I was.

Not that it was difficult to figure out once I looked over to see Bones laying there, soundly asleep, with our precious daughter Lucia snuggled against her in that multi-colored cotton Aztec wrap/sling thingie. They both looked so perfect—Bones with her ivory skin and silky brown hair, a vague smile on her lips as she slept, and Lucia, whose skin even now seemed a half-shade darker than her mother's, with her fluffy nut brown hair (the same color that has been seared into my mind since the morning I first set eyes on Bones in that lecture hall at American University) and her delicate, translucent eyelids that concealed her brown eyes, the ones she got from me. I sat on the hospital room's sofa, despite the twinge I felt in my lower back as my muscles and my cranky discs rebelled against the angle of the furniture, because I knew Bones needed the rest, after all the craziness of the last thirty-six hours and because—more selfishly, I admit—I just wanted to watch them, to look at them, to admire them, without an audience and without interruption.

I thought back to that night at the pool hall, nearly eight years ago, and wondered if any of this—me, her, together, married, with our amazing baby girl—would have happened had we gone back to my apartment that night. I smiled and shook my head, cringing in silence at the thought of it. I am fairly sure that, had we spent the night together that rainy night, none of what we have now would exist. Hell, we might not have even survived as partners had we gone back to my place and made love that night—

And it would have been making love, at least for me. I knew, the very moment I walked into that lecture hall, that the two of us were destined for more than just a one-off consultation on a cold case homicide. _I knew, _from the way something in her cool green eyes lit off something deep inside of my soul, that Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institution and Special Agent Seeley Booth would be more, together, than either of us were as individuals—and, even then, I knew that the something more was more than just partners, more than just the most effective crime-solving duo in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Make no mistake: had we gone back to my apartment that night, it would have been amazing. I knew it, and she knew it. She even said as much, that night:

"_So you're afraid when I look at you in the morning, I'll have regrets?" _

_She laughed. "That would never happen," she replied with a wry grin as the taxi pulled away from the curb, leaving me standing in the middle of the street in the drizzling rain as she waved at me out the rear window of the cab. _

I walked home in the rain, half-hard on account of the images that raced through my mind and the unforgettable taste of her on my lips. I'd be lying if I told you I didn't spend the next year thinking of her and that knee-melting, gut-tightening kiss every time I jerked off. I had never been so turned on by and attracted to a woman in my life, but even then, that night—even though I hardly knew her, I knew deep down that she was my other half, that she would complete me, and I had a feeling that I completed her. But also knew that the way she was—so logical, rational, controlled, methodical, so skeptical of fate, magic, myth and everything else that was intangible and scientifically unverifiable—she would not admit to feeling anything that night more than the arousal that burned in her eyes and dripped from her husky voice. Had we gone back to my place that night, instead of parting ways as we did, we would have come together in a spectacular way. We would have caught fire. I know it. I would have made love to her. It probably would have been, at least the first time—assuming that we would have done it more than once that night, which is, in my mind, a fair assumption—quick, hot and intense, but it would not have been meaningless, crappy sex, at least for me. But for her—she would have told herself it was _just sex, _even though I know that she felt something when we kissed on that back stoop behind the pool hall. She wasn't ready to go all-in, emotionally, and so she would have come together with me that night, letting me explore her body as she explored mine, but she would have woke up that morning and told herself that it was _just sex, _just amazing, thoroughly satisfying sex, a way of satisfying biological imperatives.

I think she knew that was something more in that kiss. I could tell the way I felt her, for those few long seconds, abandon herself and her self-control and join me in being inundated by the passion and the indescribable connection we shared. When she turned around—

"_We are _not _spending the night together."_

"_Of course we are. Why?"_

"_Tequila."_

Sitting here, now, watching her sleep with our newborn daughter cradled against her warm breast, I know that what happened (or, rather, didn't happen) that night was the best thing, the way it should have been. The way it all worked out, the year we spent apart when she refused to work with me after the Gemma Arrington case, the six years we spent dancing around each other, each of us considering whether what we had could be more than what it was—it was all worth it.

The night we did come together—the night we conceived our daughter—it was under circumstances that neither of us could have imagined. There was was no candlelit dinner, no dancing, no after-dinner cocktails, no slow and fumbling foreplay on the couch. She came into my bedroom that night wracked with grief and guilt, dark circles under pale eyes that were red-rimmed and raw with tears, her lips moist, not with bright silky lipstick, but rather with her salty tears. I was a pretty sorry sight myself that night, having lay in bed for hours without sleep, thinking about Vincent, collapsed on the Jeffersonian's forensic platform, his life pulsing out of him unstoppably, running over my fingers as I pressed my hands into his chest, trying futilely to staunch the bleeding. But what haunted me more than the memory of watching a man die was the thought that, had I handed that phone to Bones and not to Vincent, it would have been her life pulsing out onto the steel floor, running over my fingers as I watched her life fade away behind lifeless eyes. The thought of it, even now—well, I can't even think about it. I can't.

We fell back onto my bed and I cradled her in my arms as she sobbed, her tears soaking through my shirt so that I felt them on my chest. Holding her close, I felt her soft brown hair tickle my nose as I breathed, and I could smell the delicate scent of ginger and coconut that I had come to know over the years as that of her shampoo. I held her in my arms and wanted to envelop her, somehow protect her from the pain, as if I could just soak up her pain and make it my own. I could feel her heart breaking as she sobbed, and my heart broke for her. As her crying seemed to fade into occasional shudders, I turned my head and kissed her forehead gently.

I knew then, at that moment, that I loved her—that I'd loved her for years—and that I did not want to let one more day go by without her knowing how much she meant to me.

She must have been thinking the same thing, because no sooner had her tears stopped then she lifted her head and, meeting my eyes briefly, pressed her lips to mine. For a fraction of a second, I couldn't move. Then, my body and heart propelled me to respond to her kiss with one of my own, and our mouths met again, her tongue sliding across my lower lip as I opened my mouth to her. That kiss unlocked the floodgates and all of the emotions that had built up between us over the prior seven years washed over us. Still uncertain, I tried to hold back, but as her mouth hungrily grasped at mine, I felt my desire for her tugging low in my gut and it overwhelmed me. I kissed her. Her mouth was so soft and warm, and the taste of her was everything I remembered from the first kiss we shared behind the pool hall, and the teasing reminder I got that afternoon at the Jeffersonian a couple of years ago thanks to Caroline's holiday puckishness.

"Ohh, Bones..." I murmured as I rolled onto my side. I held her gorgeous face between my hands as we kissed and I felt her fingers caress my chest before sliding down to my belly and under my T-shirt. I wanted her more than I'd ever wanted anything in my life. I felt my skin flash hot with desire as her fingers traced the outline of my abs and toyed with the waistband of my sweatpants. I slid one of my hands down from her jaw to meet hers at my hip.

"Are you sure?" I asked, breaking our kiss. "I mean, we don't—"

She growled softly and whispered, "I want this." She opened her eyes and stared into mine. "I want this more than anything else in the world, Seeley."

Her use of my given name told me what a thousand other words could not—that she was ready to take me into her life, to be with me, to try and make a life together, with me, as a man, as a person. She was willing to give up the last of her imperviousness to be with me. In that moment, I knew I had everything I had ever really wanted—her love—and I was not going to let her slip through my fingers again.

"So do I, Bones," I whispered huskily. "So do I."

I kissed the little notch at the base of her neck, a little spot I'd noticed and thought about a thousand times over the years, wondering if I would ever have a chance to put my lips there. "I want you so bad, Bones," I said to her.

"I want you, too, Booth," she whispered, her breath panting against my ear. "Make love to me," she said as she turned her head and kissed me, her mouth covering mine and silencing the moan I offered as the only possible response to her request.

When she spread her legs for me and pulled me to her, my head was spinning—not just with desire and arousal (though it was all that too) but also with the knowledge that we had emerged from the other side of seven years of angst and missed opportunities. I knew then that she loved me, even if she had not said so in so many words. As I pressed into her for the first time, I felt her tight, wet warmth surround me—the most amazing, wonderful sensation I had ever felt—and knew that the timing was finally right, because she loved me, and I loved her, and making love to her would, indeed, be making love. As I thrust into her, slowly and deeply probing into her soft, delicious warmth then pulling away before pushing in again, I felt as if I was swimming in my love for her, awash in the love I knew she felt for me. As I followed her over the edge and emptied myself into her, it was everything I always wanted it to be between us. _Perfect._

Had I taken her home with me that rainy night and made love to her with the aftertaste of Cuervo on our breaths, it would not have been the same, and I know I would not have wanted any of this to be any different than it is.

"_Do you believe in fate?" I asked her after shaking her hand for the first time._

"_Absolutely not," she replied. "Ludicrous."_

It might not be fate, but I would not have wanted it any other way.

And for that, I thank God.

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><p><strong><em>Soooo...<em>**

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